# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1882_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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revealed fact, but God alone knows whether anyone will persevere in faith to the end eventualiter [as the case may be]. 2. The doctrine that every Christian can and should be certain that he will, as one of the elect, either not fall from grace at all or at any rate infallibly come to faith again, and be quite certainly saved, has no ground in Holy Scripture and is, especially for young Christians, a most dangerous comfort." ("Altes und Neues" I, 235.) In the letter accompanying the theses (of 16 May 1879) Prof. Schmidt even writes: "The whole doctrine I naturally was not to give in outline, but only the principal points of difference. It is for this reason that I put first the two theses which deal with the reality and the importance of the certainty of one's election. This practical question, which reaches so deep into the life of faith of the individual, into public preaching and into all teaching, is to me by far the most important in the question and would, in my opinion, form an essential point of difference even given agreement otherwise on the definition of election."

To be sure, Prof. Schmidt says here that the certainty of one's election, which in the second thesis he quite rightly calls a "certainty of faith," has "no ground in Holy Scripture"; but with that he contradicts a whole number of sun-clear and plain passages of Scripture. Christ says to the seventy disciples: "Rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven." (Luke 10:20.) To the Apostles, however, the Lord says: "Ye have not chosen me (οὐχ ὑμεῖς με), but I have chosen you" (John 15:16), and soon after: "Because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." (John 15:19.) Following Christ in this, the holy Apostles also comfort the believers in their congregations with the fact that they are elect. After St. Paul, among other things, had treated the doctrine of election, he continues: "Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? — Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. 8:33, 35-39.) So the same Apostle further assures the believers at Ephesus: "According as he hath